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Services / 04 — Deals & transaction advisory
Financial, tax and commercial due diligence, business valuations, transaction structuring and completion support — for buyers, sellers and investors in Pakistan and the Gulf.
Most transaction problems are not concealed. They are simply not looked for, because the timeline is tight and the relationship is friendly at the point diligence needs to be unfriendly. We report what we find, on a timeline that respects the deal, and we tell you before signature rather than after.
A compressed timeline changes how diligence should be scoped — it does not mean skipping it. Tell us the timeline and we will tell you what is realistic within it, and what is deliberately not being tested.
We are buying a business and need to know what we are actually buying.
Financial, tax and commercial due diligence before the price is fixed — not as a formality after it.
We are selling, and want to know what a buyer will find first.
Vendor due diligence surfaces problems while you still control the timeline and the narrative around them.
An investor wants numbers in a form we do not currently have them in.
Financial statements re-presented and tested to the standard a diligence process expects.
We need a valuation for a shareholder exit, dispute or restructuring.
Independent valuation is a different exercise from agreeing a price with a counterparty across a table.
The deal has to close in weeks, not months.
Scope calibrated to the timeline, with the highest-risk areas covered first and the gaps made explicit.
We are bringing in an investor for a minority stake.
Structuring that protects control while making the round genuinely attractive to the investor.
Two family-owned businesses are merging.
Combining businesses that have never been tested against a common standard raises its own diligence questions.
The deal closed and the completion accounts are now disputed.
Working capital and completion mechanisms interpreted the way they were drafted — not the way either side now wishes they had been.
Financial input into a deal from first look to completion, coordinated with your legal counsel rather than in place of it.
Testing whether the numbers presented are the numbers that exist.
What liabilities transfer with the company, and what is genuinely being warranted away.
Whether the business performs the way its numbers suggest it does.
Independent of the negotiation, built to be defensible under challenge.
Structure decided before price is agreed, not fitted around it afterwards.
Financial input into the commercial terms; legal drafting sits with your counsel.
Where deals most often get disputed after signature.
The integration questions that surface once the deal is actually done.
"We had diligence done" usually means one of these was covered well and the others were assumed.
| Type | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Financial due diligence | Is the financial position what it is presented to be, and is it sustainable — not just accurate on the day it was measured. |
| Tax due diligence | What liabilities transfer with the company, whether they are properly disclosed, and whether the warranties actually cover them. |
| Commercial due diligence | Does the business perform the way its numbers suggest — customer concentration, contract durability and management dependency tested against the plan. |
| Legal due diligence | Handled by your legal counsel. We coordinate our findings with theirs so nothing falls in the gap between the two workstreams. |
We are not a law firm and do not perform legal due diligence ourselves — where a finding needs contractual or title review, it goes to your counsel with our financial analysis attached.
Advising both the buyer and the seller on the same transaction creates a conflict our Code of Ethics does not allow, regardless of how the fee is structured. We act for one side of a deal, and we say so before we are engaged.
Where we are the statutory auditor for a party to the transaction, valuation and diligence work for that same party can create a self-review threat under the ICAP Code of Ethics — for public interest entities, this work is provided only to non-audit clients. We will tell you which side of that line your engagement falls on before we quote, rather than after you have engaged us.
Our job is to tell you what is there. Whether the deal still makes sense with that information is your decision to make — not ours to make for you by shading a report.
A material issue reaches you the week it is found, not batched into a report delivered at the end of the timeline when there is less room to react to it.
A two-week close means the highest-risk areas get covered first, and everyone agrees explicitly on what is deliberately not being tested.
Pakistan tax and company law expertise sits alongside the team advising on Gulf and cross-border structuring, so a transaction spanning both isn't handed between two disconnected advisers.
Reports are structured so the negotiation can lift warranties, indemnities and price adjustments directly from them, not translate a narrative into legal language after the fact.
We are not a law firm. Where a finding needs contractual drafting, it goes to your counsel with the financial analysis attached — not a redraft attempt of our own.
These are the firm's controls applied to transaction work specifically. The full set, applied to every engagement of any type, is published.
The route chosen changes what transfers, what the warranties need to cover, and what completion actually looks like.
The buyer acquires the company itself, including its full history.
The buyer acquires specific assets or a division, leaving unwanted liabilities behind.
Growth capital or a strategic partner is introduced without a full sale.
The right structure changes the tax position, what the warranties need to cover, and what completion looks like — we help decide it before terms are agreed, not after signature.
No. Advising both sides of the same transaction creates a conflict our Code of Ethics does not allow. We act for one side, and we tell you which side we are able to take before we are engaged — including where our audit relationships on either side of the deal rule us out entirely.
It depends on the scope agreed and how readily available the target's records are — a clean, well-documented business with a cooperative management team moves considerably faster than one reconstructing records mid-process. We give a realistic estimate once we know the scope and the timeline you are working to, rather than a standard figure that doesn't reflect either.
Often, yes. Vendor due diligence lets you find and address problems while you still control the timeline and the story around them, rather than discovering them for the first time in the buyer's report with the deal already under pressure.
No. We are not a law firm. We coordinate closely with your legal counsel so financial and legal findings are read together, but title, contract enforceability and litigation review sit with them.
Not always. Where we are the statutory auditor for a party to the deal, valuation work for that same party can create a self-review threat under the ICAP Code of Ethics — for public interest entities, this work is provided only to non-audit clients. We tell you where that boundary falls before we quote.
We report it as soon as it is confirmed, with enough detail for you to assess it — we do not sit on findings until a final report. Whether to renegotiate, adjust structure or walk away is your decision; our job is to make sure you are making it with full information.
Yes. Independent valuation for a shareholder exit, family settlement or dispute is a different exercise from negotiating a transaction price, and we treat it as one — built to be defensible if it is later challenged or tested in a forum.
Diligence and valuation engagements are scoped and quoted once we understand the target, the timeline and what has already been done. Compressed timelines are priced to reflect the resourcing they require, agreed upfront rather than added after the fact.
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Exploring, in negotiation, or documents already on the table. A partner will tell you what's realistic within your timeline before anything is scoped.